


maybe together we can get somewhere

by LeahRocky



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (Minor) pennywise mostly just mentions, Abuse, Abusive parents (Eddie's and Beverly's and Bill's), Angst with a Happy Ending, But this will be about all of the losers and will have whole chapters dedicated to each one, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier-centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Essentially - it's what if the losers hadn't lost their memories after It, Eventual Happy Ending, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mike Hanlon & Eddie Kaspbrak Are Best Friends, Mike's parents are like they are in the book, New York City, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, So this is the general fix it, Their personalities and plot lines are going to kind of be a mix of the book movies and miniseries, Violence, Young Adult Losers Club (IT), and their first fight with Pennywise went down in a different way, and they all went on to leave Derry at different times, but after college they manage to all drift back to each other in New York City, domestic abuse, mentions to abuse will be centered around Beverly, no memory loss, nobody is together in the beginning, slowburn, there will be flashbacks to high school
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-29 02:33:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30149406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeahRocky/pseuds/LeahRocky
Summary: New York City in 1997 is as good a place as any to start again. Eddie and Mike are the last ones in Derry, and, following their college graduation, they move to New York with nothing more than hope and a promise to never turn back. They plan to meet Bill in the city, and maybe anyone else who comes along too.But trauma lays heavy on their heads. And the kind of trauma that comes from a demon alien clown isn’t the kind you can get over in a night, in a season.When the losers reunite, they can finally relearn each other, and learn to live life away from Derry and away from all the pain they had experienced. They can start new lives together, safe with the assumption that what nearly killed them in their childhood was dead, and their trauma was in the past.But things don’t stay dead in Derry.(updating every week on Fridays!)
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter One - Dog Days

**Chapter One - Dog Days**

_"Maybe together we can get somewhere  
Any place is better  
Starting from zero, got nothing to lose  
Maybe we'll make something  
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove"_

_-Tracy Chapman (Fast Car)_

**August 29th 1997**

**New York City, NY**

Eddie Kaspbrak had taken to the habit of considering sewer rats, and whether or not the toxic grime of the subway was likely to make them even more lethal or if it all cancelled itself out, something like negative numbers.

Entering the faded brick building with the black fire escape that snaked around its front, Eddie has a cardboard box hoisted on his left shoulder, and is pondering the possibility that rats probably wouldn’t be something he’d even have to deal with if he could just figure out a way to avoid public transportation. He has his car and he has his bike. So, maybe, it’s possible.

He settles on the idea that they’d probably be at least _more_ of a risk than regular rats when he slots the key, still shiny, into the front door of the first place he would ever live without his mother.

And, finally, it isn’t until the door swings open and Eddie can see sunbeams across the ashy wood of the apartment, _his_ apartment, that he decides he doesn’t care, because the decision had already been made and there was no turning back.

 _(Besides, even if toxic sewer rats were worse than regular rats, they were probably all nothing compared to evil-clown-demon-Derry rats, so what’s he worried about anyways?_ )

Eddie sets down the box, just to the left of the heavy front door, where an end table would eventually go. There’s a stuffiness to the place, something Eddie is sure they could fix with an open window or a box fan, or, if things got really rough, a clunky old air-conditioner that he and Mike could try to hunt down this weekend. Eddie worries more about the oncoming winter, and the cold, and if he’ll even be able to stick it out until then. But those kinds of thoughts aren’t helpful, so he pushes them away.

He returns to hauling up the last of his suitcases, which he was forced to abandon in the lobby because the staircase had been too narrow for him to drag them all up at once, and the elevator was still out of use. The rest of his stuff, including his bike and his books, and everything else he couldn’t shove into his Honda, would be coming in the U-Haul that Mike rented, still back in Derry. Eddie checks his watch, which reads that it’s 5:27pm, and figures that Mike was probably currently still packing the rest of his stuff, which included most of their furniture. Originally, the plan had been that they would come down together, driving the eight hours along I-95 in tandem, Eddie in his car, Mike in the truck. That plan was smothered when Mike got behind on packing, and Eddie couldn’t stand another hour in his house, so Eddie left on schedule, met the landlord right on time, and told Mike he’d clean the place up with his extra time, alone. Mike understood.

Eddie takes a moment when he gets in to call Mike on the phone that hung on the wall with a loose coiled wire. He gets the Hanlons’ voicemail.

“Hi Mike… just wanted to let you know I got here safe. Looking forward to when you make it out tomorrow. Place hasn’t… place is still intact, so, uh… guess that means the landlord wasn’t fucking us over. As far as we know, I guess…” Eddie barks out a quiet laugh. “Uh… yeah. See you soon, I guess.”

The room is quiet when Eddie hangs up. He looks up to face the place that surrounds him.

The empty apartment consists of a decently sized living room, enough space for a rug, with a window that faces the street. There’s a kitchen to the left, with just enough room for a small dining table and two, maybe three, chairs. The bathroom is right beyond it, small, like everything else, but it has a tub, a sink, and a toilet, so it’s everything it needs to be. Their bedrooms, the only rooms on the right, have doors immediately adjacent to each other. Like everything else, they’re small, but Mike’s is a little bigger, and Eddie’s has two walls with windows, so, all in all, it’s pretty even. The whole thing looks to have not been used in months, and a fine layer of dust covers most of the floor. Small cobwebs hang in the corners, and the windows could do with washing. All of it is on Eddie’s list.

When they had toured the place, just a month earlier, Eddie had almost said no. They had had an excruciatingly long day; Eddie was sunburnt, and Mike, the eternal optimist, had gone quiet with exhaustion. Their plan had been looking more harebrained and delusional by the second once it rolled around to 7pm, and the places they had seen were all either outrageously expensive, had obvious signs of rats or cockroaches, or were soundtracked with gunshots and terror, in a way that reminded Eddie a little too much of ball bearings and slingshots. They came to this final place, the final apartment that they were meant to tour, and Eddie was really starting to wonder if all of the weeks of fighting with his mom had been worth it. The landlord, who met them on the side of the street in nothing but a wife-beater and paint-stained old Levi’s, was grizzled and scruffy, and smelled distantly like the subway Eddie was growing to lament. He grunted a hello, spat out his cigarette and stomped it into the ground, before letting them into the building. Inside, the elevator was out, the fluorescents were flickering, and the staircase they walked up was so narrow that, when Mike stood in it, both of his shoulders touched the walls. Worst of all, the rent price depended entirely on whether or not Eddie was going to be hired at that limo place, the one at which he had interviewed only the day prior. And he didn’t really think the guy interviewing him had liked him all that much. Mike himself had only just heard back from the museum, where he was hired as a tour guide, and his salary would be far from enough for them to afford even this place’s rate.

So, when the landlord showed them in, and Eddie’s stomach turned over at the stuffy heat, the cobwebs, the feelings of _can’t escape,_ and, _did you really think you could do this_ came back. He couldn’t help the way his hand drifted to his inhaler, and the way he shot that medicine down his throat like he had his whole life, and that disappointment of needing it even so far away from Derry almost did it. He almost walked out of that door right then. He almost gave up.

Mike saved the day. As he usually did. He turned, walked to the window that faced that street and pointed out to Eddie without words. In the distance, just close enough that they could see, on the wall of a large red building hung a massive billboard. It was for the New York Aquarium. Bright across that blood-red building hung a sea of blue, and, dead-center, a turtle.

Mike turned to Eddie, called it a sign, and smiled so wide and hopeful that Eddie believed him. They signed the paperwork right there, on the spackled green counters that separated the kitchen from the living room, under the gaze of the landlord. Eddie knew it was foolhardy. But, that night, as Mike drove them back to Derry, cast in the glow of the setting sun, Eddie got the call. He had gotten the job. And that’s what sealed it. He and Mike were leaving Derry, the last of the losers to do so, and were moving to New York City.

It was time. It had probably been time for a while.

Now, Eddie is alone again, wiping down the windows and staring at that turtle, realizing they probably should all have gotten out when Beverly did, sixteen, young, and with nothing to her name but hope. When Eddie thinks of her now, all he can do is hope that she’s safe, because he hadn’t heard from her since high school graduation. In that hazy heat-swelled morning, filled with the gentle chirp of crickets and birds, when Eddie’s mind was leagues away, he opened the mailbox, and found a wrinkled little postcard, bearing the sight of the Washington Monument against a flowing purple sky. It was in her handwriting, girly but sharp, and it told Eddie to stay brave, that he was the bravest of them all, and to get the fuck out of that slice of hell called Derry, signed, with love, Molly Ringwald. There was no return address. 

Eddie cried when he read it. Not for the first time that day.

And he failed her. Eddie didn’t get out. He stayed. Stayed home with _mommy_. He said, as long as Mike was there, going to Derry College alongside him, then he wasn’t truly alone. Not truly pathetic.

Just… waiting.

And the waiting seemed to never stop. In the months that followed, he waited. Mike waited. They lived at home, drove to school together, and waited. It wasn’t so bad because Mike was great company, and Eddie loved him like he loved all of them. The summer before their first year of college, their first summer alone, might have been filled with tears, but it was also filled with comfort they found in each other. They would talk often of when they’d leave, when they’d join the rest of them who got out while they could. Mike and Eddie agreed that they were just doing a year here until they’d transfer out. They’d go somewhere new. Try on a different city. Just like everyone else.

But, in their freshman year, Mike’s dad caught the Big C. And all that Mike strength and heart got funnelled right into it. Mike couldn’t dream of the future when all his dreams were filled up with dreams of his dad getting better. He had no time to fantasize about a future and a freedom. He'd figure it out after his dad got over all of this. That’s when he could think about that again.

There was no Bill to tell them what to do. No Bev to tell them how to fight. No Ben to hug them at the end of the day and no Stan to lend a quiet listening ear. And no Richie to make them laugh, make them forget about their problems as long as they needed to.

Just Eddie left, to hold Mike while he cried, to keep watch for anything still lurking, anything that might make that scar on their hands open up again. But, nothing ever came to call them all home with blood slipping through their fingers. 

It was only ever Eddie and Mike, spending quiet evenings studying, eating dinner with Mike’s family, or going for runs along train tracks, pretending they were going further than the city limits.

Besides, Eddie’s mom was a little better when it was only Mike she had to compete with. Though Mike held no favors in her heart, he wasn’t a _slut_ or a _trashmouth_ , and therefore not anything she considered to be a true threat for stealing away her Eddie-Bear. She tolerated Eddie sleeping away from home some nights, as long as he kept taking his medication, kept using his inhaler, and kept her permanently clued in to where he’d be at any given moment. So, mostly, she accepted it, this new arrangement. Eddie, in classes during the day, studying at Mike’s house more evenings than not, but sleeping at home mostly, tucked under covers where she knew he was _safe_. 

In the end, Eddie figures that she thought she had won during those years. No one had stolen Eddie away. No, all those friends Eddie had once had left him behind to live at home with her, until either of their dying days.

She was wrong, though.

Because Mike’s dad died in their senior year. He lost that battle that Eddie could only distantly remember his own father fighting, and Mike was purposeless again. Eddie worried about what might happen to him, now without his father, and without that steady support of someone who loved him so fiercely and honestly. The kind of parental love that Eddie can’t remember.

He got his answer soon.

One night, just this past May, when the crickets were loud and the air was thickening with humidity, Eddie and Mike were laying on the roof of his barn, talking of classes and exams, and what they might do with those sheets of papers that declared them qualified. Eddie had just said he was considering applying to the local grocery store, just for the summer, he’s sure, when Mike went quiet.

Mike was looking up at the stars, the ones Eddie could never see the same way, not with what he knew came from them, when he said, “I got a call from Bill.”

“Oh.” Eddie had barely heard from Bill in years.

“He’s graduating at the end of the month and he’s going to leave London.”

“Oh.”

“He’s going to move to New York. The city,” Mike said, nearly whispering.

“Oh, wow. That’s… that’s great for him,” Eddie said, his throat a little tight from the beer and a little tight from something else.

“I want to join him,” Mike said. “And I want you to come, too.”

The night went quiet after that. The crickets seemed to hush and the frogs seemed to hold their breath, as if Derry itself were waiting for Eddie’s answer. Eddie reached for his inhaler. He knew he’d need it shortly.

“Mike…” Eddie said, with those same excuses he’d always used bubbling up like habit, like he knew they were going to. The same excuses he used when it was Beverly, or Bill, or Richie, glasses fogging up from tears.

“I can’t stay here any longer, Eddie. And New York isn’t that far,” Mike said. He had that sureness in his voice that Eddie had only last heard in the sewer. That sureness of Mike, always knowing what was right and what they had to do no matter how much it terrified them.

“What about your mother?” Eddie asked, though the word he should have used was ‘my’.

“She… she heard me talking to Bill. And… well, and she’s the one who told me to leave. She said this town is dying - has been for years now. She said whatever rotted heart that had kept this evil town alive had stopped beating long ago and there was no point in staying. She told me to leave while I still could. She said I deserved to live.”

“Oh… oh god. She thinks Derry is dying?” Eddie asked. “Do you?”

“Yes. Of course. Ever since… ever since we killed It. There’s almost no one left here, you know? People have been moving away for years. Businesses have been closing down. Our classes were basically empty, even at the High School. Don’t you remember what it was like when we were kids, Eddie? Remember what this town looked like? What Main Street looked like? It’s not like that anymore. There’s barely anyone left,” Mike said.

He was right, Eddie knew that. The population had been dwindling for quite some time. Eddie had been ignoring it, trying not to focus on the people who were leaving, focus on the way their group was shrinking, while Eddie stayed behind, sick and immobile, tethered to his mom like an umbilical cord, uncut and festering.

“Are you sure about this, Mikey?” Eddie asked, though he knew. He just had to hear it. Hear in Mike’s own words that confirmation that he was leaving and Eddie really would be the last, left to die alone in this town, along with the rest of Derry, with the body of Pennywise, still beneath their streets.

“I’m sure. I’m ready. I’m ready to leave,” Mike said, in a way that almost sounded rehearsed. Like he had been practicing for years now.

“Okay… Okay. If… if that’s, uh. I’ll miss-”

“No, Eddie. No,” Mike said. “Come with me. Move to the city with me. Don’t stay in this fucking town. Don’t let this be it.”

Eddie had no answer. He knew himself. He knew the things that he was capable of. Leaving was not one of them. He couldn’t steal away in the middle of the night like Bev. He couldn’t leave with his family, make a new name for himself like Ben had. Couldn’t fly to another country like Bill, putting an ocean between himself and all of his trauma. He could never ride off into the west, dissolving into the setting sun, until he reached the ocean, like Stan and Richie had.

All Eddie could do was dry-swallow his pills that meant nothing and lock himself in his room, trying to cure the sickness that seemed to come from inside.

He biked home drunk that night, crying tears that couldn’t evaporate in the humidity, and swatting at mosquito bites he hoped his mother wouldn’t notice. He cried, thinking of all that he had lost, all the love that had escaped him to live a life _away_ , free from the claws that Derry had still latched into him.

When he finally reached his house, his mother was still awake, and immediately noticed the swelling red bites and the blotchiness of Eddie’s face. With a scolding, a handful of unidentified pills and a reminder that she warned him about that boy and his wild farm, and the dangers of hanging around somewhere like _that_ with people like _him_ , Eddie’s mom shut him in the bathroom to take a medicated bath. She barked through the door of Malaria or AIDS, or whatever other blood borne disease she had heard on the radio that morning that she was sure Eddie would have now. If the bites didn’t heal by the morning, they might need to go to the hospital, just in case.

The medication in the bath was tinged a deep red, and it reminded him of another bathroom, another time, where he scrubbed blood that grown-ups couldn’t see off of white tiles. The bathwater was hot, burning his skin, and smelling like a lie. And, in that water, that sludge of medication felt like a tomb, his final resting place, pressing in on him from all angles, burying him deep. 

There’d be no more Mike. There would only be Eddie. Eddie in Derry. Eddie alone.

When he exited the bath, tepid and late, he caught an accidental sight of himself in the mirror. The red of the water had stained his skin, gathering in the hollow of his chest, where it settled deepest and darkest. This time, the blood in the bathroom looked like it was his. 

And he wasn’t scared or disgusted, but relieved. From that dingy mirror, Eddie looked at himself and it looked like all of his impurities had poured out of him through this hole in his chest and he looked old and dead and hollow right there in the mirror. And he was relieved.

The relief is what did it. The realization that seeing himself bloody, gored, and _dead_ brought him nothing but relief is what told him he had to leave. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t die right here in Derry, buried alongside his mother, alongside the clown that almost killed every person he had ever truly loved.

He called Mike the second he got back to his room. Before Mike could even mutter a sleepy hello, Eddie said yes. He’d come with him to the city. New York was as good a place as any because it wasn’t Derry and he was ready to leave, to finally leave. He’d go. He’d get the fuck out of this town. Reunite with the only people he cared about. He’d go somewhere where he’d be loved.

There would be Bill again. And they’d go from just Mike and Eddie to now Eddie and Mike and Bill. And if there was Bill… then maybe there’d be others.

He told his mother the next day. She pouted and screamed and wept, but his resolution was strong. There was no more changing Eddie’s mind. An image had started to form in his head of Bill and Mike and Eddie in the city of possibilities, walking through central park, or sleeping in a huddle on Bill’s living room floor, like they had done throughout high school, sleeping bags, mismatched sheets and flashlights. Drunk on stolen beer, an abandoned movie still playing in the background, and Eddie pressed up next to all of the people he’d ever loved. This image, this promise of _what-could-be_ despite _what-has-been_ , is what kept him going for those miserable months. And that distant slowly growing hope that maybe he’d see the other losers again. That maybe they’d reunite. Because it sure as hell wouldn’t be happening any other way. Unless… unless they were all drawn back. Out of responsibility. Out of a blood oath.

He hadn’t seen any of them since they all left, each at their own times. The letters, if they existed, were infrequent and morose, and it didn’t take long for them to stop all together. Eddie heard a lot from Ben after he first left, and plenty from Stan in those first few years. It all tapered off, though. Eventually. Eddie didn’t have to wonder why, much. It was the pain of the place. The pain of the memories. The pain that Eddie still hadn’t escaped.

And the losers had no reason to come back. When they left, their parents all eventually took their own look at that dying town, dried up and bare, and decided it was about time to plant new roots and to try to salvage the rest of their own lives. All, except for Eddie’s and Mike’s, whose parents had been tied to the town by necessity, or an unbreakable connection where evil begets itself. 

Stan’s parents went to Atlanta, deep south and far away from the town with buildings formed from death. Richie’s parents went to Oregon, hoping for a better life for his sister. Bill’s went to Florida to forget Georgie just like they forgot their other son. And Beverly’s dad went straight to hell. None of the losers had a reason or an excuse to come back, not even to visit Eddie and Mike, left behind like old toys after a move. 

But… if they were all together, the three of them, then maybe Eddie could hope. Eddie could hope to see them again, could hope the density of all three of them might draw them all in like gravity.

And, a week ago, Eddie’s hopes were shot with straight adrenaline when they were confirmed, for what would only be the first time. Bill called Mike one night in that late August, ( _after Mike and Eddie told him they were going to join him in the Big City, had already signed the papers, and Bill was so ecstatic that Eddie is still sure he may have started crying),_ and told them, against all odds, that he himself had just gotten off the phone with Ben, whom they all hadn’t heard from since about midway through High School. Ben had been living in the city for just over a year, working at an architecture firm. The week prior, he had been onsite at NYU where they were re-building one of the science buildings and, while waiting for his coffee, began flipping through the University’s newsletter. He caught sight of the name William Denborough, the tiny black font calling his attention like a homing beacon. The name struck him so hard that he almost doubled over before he could even read the rest of it, all about the promising young author from London who would be attending school right there in the fall. The short article on Bill and his work in London was attached to a snippet of one of Bill’s stories, and Ben just read a few sentences before it scared the hell out of him because he realized Bill was writing from their shared experience, and he didn’t want to think about all of that in the middle of a Starbucks. Ben immediately ran to the registrar to track down Bill’s number, and called him the second he got back to his own little shoebox of an apartment. He told Bill that he missed him like hell and needed to see him as soon as possible, just name a time and place. In response, Bill let him know that Eddie and Mike would be there in August, just like him, and they could all get dinner the first Sunday they were all together again. Ben just said they oughta get their asses out here sooner, cause he thought he may die if he had to wait any longer - six years had been plenty.

So three became four. 

And all that sweet honey of childhood, all those years in the Barrens, or hours spent under the blinding sun in the quarry, all seven of them springlike and glorious seemed like it might be aging into something else just as miraculous. Three. Now Four. The _four_ of them.

But, just one for now. Because Eddie is still alone, in this apartment building, waiting for Mike, still in Derry. He couldn’t go to Bill, who was still in orientation, and busy up to his head. And he had forgotten to ask for Ben’s number in all of the excitement and planning of everything else. For now, Eddie is totally alone.

He didn’t even have furniture to keep him company, or a chair to plant his exhausted body in. Mike’s mom had been the gracious one, donating to their cause all of the extra furniture that had stored itself away in the garage, or that would be of no use in their now empty house. Eddie’s mom did no such thing. So, Eddie had nothing, yet. Not until Mike got there the next afternoon, bringing up the U-Haul like a messiah with tidings of bed-frames and mattresses. For tonight, though, Eddie would be sleeping in an old sleeping bag, right on that dusty wood floor and his only company would be his battered suitcases, and his car, wedged in the parking spot behind the building that cost them an extra forty dollars a month.

He walks to the kitchen, backlit by the setting sun and feels its heat resting on his shoulders like a burden. The window is open, but there’s no smell of fresh water and sweet leaves coating the humidity like it did in Derry. Garbage and sweat float through the air instead. And smog. The sharp and acidic smell of smog.

Smog was one of his mother’s biggest worries. It was the first thing she said would kill him if he left. She said New York is _dirty_ and Eddie is _sensitive_ . His lungs wouldn’t be able to handle that pollution that weighs on the city, turns everything to filth. He’d die in that apartment and nobody would know until the smell of his rotting body alerted the neighbors, and his poor old mother would get a call, and the shock of it all would kill her right there in her seat. Did Eddie really want to let his life end in such a foolish way? Did Eddie _really_ want to do that to the person who loved him most?

No, Eddie thought. She wasn’t the person who loved him most.

But her words could hit deeper than Eddie’s defenses were built. And he _did_ fear that he wouldn’t be able to handle it. He _did_ fear that he’d die alone, small and scared, life unlived, love unknown.

Worse than that, he feared she was right when she said he'd last a week before crawling back to her and begging for forgiveness. He feared he’d set everything up, done all this work, made all these drives, just to fail, just to run home, tail tucked between his legs. He would fail Mike, fail Ben, fail Bill. He’d fail Stan and Bev and Richie who didn’t even know he was here, didn’t even know that he finally took their advice and finally left, got the hell out of that town. He’d fail the potential of that future that had seemed so promising, so laid before him in glittering lights.

Worst of all, though, Eddie feared he never even left. He feared that the apartment around him, the car horns from the street, and the city dust beneath his fingers were all a delusion, an impossible hallucination. He feared he was still in Derry, locked in his room in a drugged-up stupor. Or caught in the deadlights, in those sewers beneath the blood soaked streets, and, at any second, he’d feel the pierce of It’s teeth, cutting away chunks of flesh, and his blood would pour, impure and dirty, from his body before he was met with that endless blackness that he only ever saw when he stayed awake at night, staring through the dark of his childhood bedroom.

How could he be sure he’d left? How could he ever truly know?

In Derry, he was oriented. Knew every street, every direction like they were his own veins, blue and winding beneath his tan skin. But he knows nothing of this city. He doesn’t know the way it thinks, the way it breathes.

But he could learn. He could run the streets, trace its paths, and keep far away from that lonesome whistle bell.

He ties the key that still has no chain to the lanyard from Derry College that he had tucked away in the front pocket of his backpack. He puts it underneath the t-shirt he’s wearing and it’s not long until he finds his running shorts and shoes, packed away carefully in his largest suitcase, underneath the rest of his wardrobe, but above the old album that hurts too much to open most days. He dresses in the bathroom, because his bedroom still doesn’t have curtains, and he’s heard of peeping Toms and knows the city is probably chock-full of them.

Everything fits like normal. And, inside the bathroom, he can’t smell the city. If he closes his eyes, it’s almost familiar enough to be Derry.

But that’s the wrong direction, because Eddie is supposed to be running forward. The goal is straight ahead into the rising sun until the only thing behind him are the memories that would hurt when they’d linger. He’d run the streets of New York until he knew them, knew them like they were his own hometown and he’d lived there for years. He’d learn them like he learned the route to every loser’s house, running back and forth, biking until his thighs gave out, and going back again for everything that crossed in between.

He stands in front of the apartment door, _his_ apartment door, and balls his fists at his side. He will open this door, and the city will be his. He won’t have to turn back. He can run it until he knows it, until he can drive it and call it home. Live somewhere in a life that he could finally call _his_.

He hand drifts up, crests the cold copper of the doorknob. It turns, he pulls, and he’s ready to step forward.

But someone is blocking his path. A panting mess in the middle of the hallway, with a smile that Eddie knows too well.

“Well, hello, Eddie Spaghetti. Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes?”


	2. Chapter Two - Go East, Young Man

**Chapter Two - Go East, Young Man**

_ “‘Yeah you’re the comeback kid _

_ Let me look at you’ _

_ Then look away _

_ I’m the runaway. I’m the hardly stay.” _

_ -Sharon Von Etten (Comeback Kid) _

  
  


Richie Tozier would probably still be getting sunburnt on the beach if he hadn’t been running late that day.

It was the first week of June and he was buttoning up the top of his shirt the way his uniform demanded when the phone rang, cutting through the thrum of the air-conditioner in the airy apartment he shared with Stan.

The rattle of the ring was loud enough to make him jump and had a quality that he would later describe as ominous. As if he could tell whatever would be coming through on the other line would be upending, would maybe change everything. He doesn’t know how he knew, but, in that moment, for just that moment, he knew that, by answering the phone, he’d be committing to something with far reaches and long arms. Something that stretched itself all the way back to Derry, to the town of death he had only barely managed to escape.

He almost didn’t even pick it up, too scared, and making the excuse to himself that he was too focused on being late for yet  _ another _ shift at the bar. But Stan wasn’t home and their voicemail box was full because Richie hadn’t been bothering to delete the plethora of messages they had been getting from girls he picked up while he worked, all of them begging to know if they’d ever get the great Richie Tozier in bed again. But Richie didn’t do reruns. He always got bored. Stan called him obnoxious for leaving the voicemails to fester, claiming Richie was doing it on purpose to try to prove something to himself.  _ To compensate _ , had been the exact phrase Stan had used. Richie asked Stan if he was implying that Richie had a small dick. Stan said he was. In turn, Richie reminded Stan that he’d seen his dick plenty of times, so he was clearly wrong and to stop making things up. Stan countered by saying every time the sight had been so traumatic that he’d forgotten it instantly. Richie couldn’t think of a comeback.

So, he answered the phone.

“Hello?” Richie had said, simultaneously shoving a stale piece of toast in his mouth to call it lunch.

“R-Richie Tozier? Is that you?”

“The one and only,” Richie said, but his brain was tickling at a memory, uprooting itself with vital urgency.

“It’s Bill.”

Bill’s clarification was unnecessary. The realization had already dawned. “ _ No kidding.  _ Wowza Bill, haven’t heard from you in ages,” Richie said, so shocked he couldn’t come up with much else.

“N-nice to hear your v-voice, again” Bill said. 

“How’d you get my number? I’m still out in-”

“California, right? I g-g-got your number from your m-mother.”

“How’d you get her number?”

“My mother.”

“Oh,” Richie paused.

“No joke, huh? F-felt like I s-set you up for that one,” Bill said with a laugh that sounded tinny over the phone’s speaker.

Richie was still a little too dumbstruck. A little too scared. A call from Bill could mean… could mean a lot of things. “No, guess not. Still a little surprised you’re calling, I guess. Thought you were in London, _wot wot_ _and the queen and all that_.” Richie’s hand began to ache, pulsing from his palm where he held the phone.

Bill laughed. “You know… I didn’t th-think I’d miss y-your voices, but, I gotta say, I’m g-glad to hear you still do them.”

“What can I say, Bill? I’m just about as consistent and regular as Stan’s bowel movements.”

“Maybe I d-don’t miss everything.”

“You say that now.”

“Sure I d-do. But, uh, yes, to answer your q-question. I am still in luh-London. For the t-t-time being.”

“Time being?”

“Yeah.”

Richie paused, before gulping down a breath and starting, “Come on, Bill, enlighten me, cause I’m just about shaking in my boots. Why’re ya calling? Everything alright? It’s not… well…” Richie asked, but his voice swallowed up before he could get there.

“What? Oh! Oh, no, no. Sorry, uh. I j-j-j-just wanted to call to l-l-let you know I’m m-moving back. B-back to the states,” Bill said.

Richie’s shoulders unclenched, and he felt his knees might go out in relief.  _ Close one _ . “Oh! No kidding, huh? To Derry... or?”

“Oh f-f-fuck no. New York. The city.”

“Big Apple, eh? Joining the mafia?”

Bill laughed. “No, not y-y-yet. Going to grad school at NYU. For wr-wruh-writing.”

“Mister Big Shot. Congratulations. Ya know, I did always say you’d be the one to make it big,” Richie said. “After me, o’course.”

“And I assume that’s w-what you’ve b-been doing, yeah? Big man on the west coast? How’s the other side t-t-treating you?”

Richie looked down at his stained bartender’s shirt and his busted loafers that continued to smell like the floor of a frat house, no matter how much he scrubbed. “Couldn’t be any better if I dreamed it myself,” he said.

Bill laughed. “Good, good. I’m g-g-glad to hear.” He paused, seemed to swallow on the other line. “W-well, I just thought I’d give you a call to l-let you know. If… if you’re ever back East, j-just shoot me a line and maybe we could go g-g-get dinner or something. Or brunch. I… I’d love to see you again. It’s been a while.”

“Oh, yeah, Bill, I’d love that. And, same goes here, ya know. Ever come Pacific side, just give me a holler. I’ll show you how west coasters get down. Here’s a hint: it’s just as green but about a thousand times stronger than the shit we’d smoke in the Barrens.”

Bill laughed. “I’d l-l-like that.”

“Maybe if I make it out back East again we might not even get almost-murdered by a clown. Do something nice and casual. Like bowling. Wouldn’t that be something? Really, our shared experiences can only get better.”

Bill doesn’t laugh at that. “Yeah, s-s-s-sure.” He pauses again. “Oh! B-before I forget… I oughta tell you that I’m not gonna be the only one h-here. In the city.”

“No kidding? You get married to some Russian bride? Engaging in a green card marriage?”

“No, n-nothing like that. P-plenty single. It, uh… well, it s-s-sounds like Mike and Eddie are gonna be j-joining me and are g-gonna move out here. Think they’re touring p-p-places in July, actually.”

_ Oh.  _ Richie’s head feels like it’s burst with running water. He hadn’t heard anything about Eddie in a little over three years. And he felt that stretch of time deep in his stomach, something like butterflies or guilt. “Eddie? And Mike? They’re coming together?”

“Sounds like it.”

“How… where were they before?”

“You mean like in school? M-Mike said they both stayed in D-D-D-Derry. Went to D-Derry College, like th-they said they were gonna. But they d-d-didn’t transfer out.”

“Oh.”  _ Figures. _

“Anyways… you got a p-pen and paper? I’ll give you my n-n-n-number.”

.

Richie ended up skipping his shift all together. When Stanley came back, he found Richie pouring himself a shot of rum. It was his third.

“Richie? I thought you worked tonight,” Stan said, relaxing the knot in his tie as their front door shut behind him. He set down his briefcase by the door and tapped his thin-as-bird-bone fingers three times against his elbow.

“Bill called,” Richie said, tossing back the shot and letting the fire of it scald down his throat.

“ _ Bill Denbrough? _ ” Stan’s eyebrows flew high. “Oh, shit. How is he? Feels like we haven’t heard anything from him since he left for London. Back when we left for school.”

Richie barks a half laugh. “Uh… yeah. Well, he’s coming back. Stateside, that is.”

“What? Why?” Stan asked, before his eyes flitted over to the empty shot glass and the open bottle of rum, landing finally on Richie’s shaking hands. His face went paler than it had been since they crossed the border into California. “Is… It?”

“No,” Richie said quickly. “No. He’s just… well. He’s moving to New York for school. NYU, if you can believe it.”

Stan’s shoulders dropped away from the place they had been holding just below his ears, and the breath he released was shaky but full. He leaned back against the wall and said, “You scared me.”

“Oh, trust me, Bill scared the hell outta me, too. I thought the same thing when I heard that motherfucker on the line. You know, he has that same fucking morose tone he had all through high school. Made me think we’d be back up to our knees in greywater trying to not get fucking eaten.”

“Richie, come on. Let’s not… uh. Let’s not talk about that.”

“Sorry. Just a little… well. I thought we were being called to face the music.”

Stan sighed, his mouth a tight line, but his head nodding. His eyes met Richie’s again. “So, NYU, huh?”

“Yep. For writing, apparently.”

“Good for him.”

“Yeah. Don’t think I’m surprised.”

“Me neither.”

Richie took a deep breath, ran his hand through his hair. “It doesn’t end there.”

“No?”

“Nope. Looks like Eddie and Mike are joining him. They’re moving to New York, too.”

“Oh, wow, no kidding? Where are they moving from? Did they go to school together somewhere?”

Richie poured out another shot while Stan watched. “Yep. In Derry. They never left.”

Stan let out a low whistle. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Can you imagine?”

“Honestly? No. And I don’t want to.”

“Me neither,” Richie said and the truth of it felt like thick guilt, lining his throat. He knocked back the shot.

“Shake you up bad, huh?”

“You ever been to New York?” Richie asked, ignoring Stan’s question, letting the words bubble to the surface before he could stop himself.

Stan quirked his face with the same expression he got when he saw a new bird in the wild. Or like when he saw one he hadn’t seen in a while. “No. Have you?”

“Nope.”

Stan continued to watch Richie. A beat passed, and Richie could hear their air conditioner rattle over the still evening. 

Stan’s eyes began to roll before Richie’s mouth even opened.

“Let’s move to New York,” Richie said.

“Richie, you’re insane,” Stan said at the same time.

“Am not! Or, maybe, who knows, don’t think a lotta sane people would consider being chased by a werewolf as part of the normal experience-”

“-Richie-”

“-Just.. Just listen, Stan. We graduated. Got the stupid piece of paper and everything. We bent L.A. to our will just like we said we were gonna.”

“Yes, but-”

“And we always said we didn’t wanna hang around here after. We said we were gonna try something else once we could, didn’t we?”

“Richie-”

“And, Stan! There are jobs for accountants  _ everywhere _ . Fuck, there are branches of your fucking  _ firm _ everywhere! It’s like the most fucking common profession in the world.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“ _ Oh, come on, Stan!” _ Richie said, and his voice was almost begging. “Would… would you just think it over?”

“I cannot believe you. One fucking phone call and you’re asking me to move 3,000 miles away, back in the direction we came.”

“We didn’t come from New York.”

“ _ Direction _ , Richie, I said,  _ direction. _ ”

“Semantics.”

“I could kill you,” Stan said.

“In a heartbeat. I’d let ya.”

Stan rolled his eyes again. He didn’t like it when Richie made jokes like that. But Richie only made jokes like that when his heart was up his ass and he was four sheets to the wind. He pulled his hands through his unruly hair and looked at Stan, made his face as honest as it could go and said, “Stanley. Don’t you miss them?”

Stan sighed and his lips went thin. He gazed toward the opposite wall, where they had hung their collective pictures from their youth. Pictures of them at the arcade, Richie shoving Eddie, while Stan crossed his arms in the back. Pictures from outside the movie theater, Richie and Stan pretending to be Johnny Utah and Bodhi in front of the poster for Point Break, surfing on invisible surfboards. Pictures of Beverly and Ben, their hair shiny under the summer sun. Pictures of Bill and Mike, tucked beneath beneath the shade of a tree and reading.

“Of course. Of course. Every day.”

“Then let’s get the band back together. I hate my fucking job and they probably tip bartenders better in the city. And… like I said. Accountants everywhere.”

Stan sighed, stared at Richie, and waited for any inkling of doubt to present itself. Any sign that this wasn't a fully formed idea, and was just another lick of that mindless Richie impulsiveness. When no sign came, Stan’s head fell to his hand and he sighed, again.

“Let me… let me think it over,” Stan said, before walking to his room and shutting the door, abandoning his briefcase by their coat stand.

Richie watched TV that night, alone in their shared living room, flicking through movies and television, nothing landing right, not with everything on his mind. The air conditioning thrummed on and off, the street lights flickered through the window in a way that reminded him of high school. Of nights sneaking out to lay on someone’s roof.

After an hour of Stan being alone in his room, he came out, asked for the number Bill had called from and disappeared for another two hours. He emerged to eat an apple, and disappeared again for the rest of the night.

The next day, when the morning sun came through the shingles, and Richie still hadn’t slept, Stan told Richie he was still thinking. He went to work like normal, though his shirt looked a little more rumpled than was typical Stan-fare, and his tie was still untied when he left the door. Richie would have said something, but he didn’t want to overload Stan’s brain.

Richie spent the whole rest of the day thumbing through comics, turning record after record over, and loitering on the boardwalk, wondering if his days on it were numbered. He napped briefly when he came home, just on the couch, where the thread-bare cushions rubbed his new sunburn raw.

Stan came back that afternoon, found Richie in a sweating pile on the floor of their carpet, smoking a joint, and said, “Fine, fucker, you win.”

Richie leaped up to meet him, his eyes like moons. “You better not be joking with me, Stanley. You really better not.”

“I’m not. Turns out we have an East Coast branch. My managers didn’t love it… but they said there’s an opening. And I told them… I fucking told them it was a necessity. Move me out there or I quit.”

Stan stared at Richie, before his face broke into that beautiful Stan smile that Richie had grown so accustomed to. Richie leaped up and engulfed Stan in a hug, laughing like everything had been one long, long dream. 

They were going home.

.

Two months later, in the final week of July, they packed up their bags, any furniture they thought necessary and small enough to fit in Stan’s Volvo, and an ounce of weed Richie hid in the compartment that was meant to hold a spare tire. It was bittersweet to leave the apartment they had lived in for three years, but Richie had used up all of his nostalgia, and he didn’t cry, even though he thought he would. Stan got a little misty when they looked at the Pacific Ocean for the last time, but Richie didn’t mention it and the rest of their drive through California felt like a proper goodbye. The state did them good but there was more they had to see, miles to go before they could sleep. Richie thought Stan probably felt the same way because they still cheered when they crossed state lines, just like they had when they were driving the other way, four long years ago.

It wasn’t until they were about halfway through Arizona, though, when Richie started to pick up that Stan might have been getting a little nervous.

Eating lunch in a McDonald’s parking lot, the sun heavy on their skin, Richie and Stan were listening to a cassette of throwback songs from their time in High School. Nirvana and Queen, Rage Against the Machine and Bon Jovi. They all sounded just as rebellious and made Richie feel the same angst he did when he listened to them on the floor of his childhood bedroom, ignoring his homework and cutting holes in his jeans with kitchen scissors.

The cassette turned over and Richie adjusted the handkerchief he wore around his head, because he said he wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn if he was going to be moving to New York and needed to get in the headspace now. Stan called him a dork, and Richie told him that if he wanted one himself, he should have told him before he went to the thrift store to donate all of their kitchenware, and that jealousy wasn’t a good look on him.

Besides, it probably would have made Eddie proud, to know Richie was doing literally  _ anything _ to protect his skin from the sun. And the sun that day was unrelenting. It laid across his arms, dry and gritty and turned the black leather on the inside of Stan’s car to hot coal beneath his skin.

Stan finished his sandwich, tucked the paper of it into their jimmy rigged trashcan between the seats. He fiddled with the steering wall, tapped three times on his ear lobe, and turned to Richie, who was still stuffing fries into his mouth.

“Richie… there’s something I think I have to ask.”

“No, Stan, I promise I didn’t sell any of your bird books in the garage sale,” Richie said with a giggle.

Stan groaned. “Ugh, no. I’m serious.”

Richie turned to him more fully, with the salt lingering on his tongue, dryer than usual, and asked, “What is it?”

“Do… do you think this has something to do… with…” Stan steeled himself. “With It? Or with Maturin?”

Richie’s stomach dropped a little. “What? Stan…” he said, his food suddenly unappetizing.

“Well, it was just all pretty convenient. Wasn’t it?” 

“I don’t think there’s anything convenient about the position I’m sitting in right now,” Richie responded, pointing to the bag at his feet and the right angle of his knees.

“No, come on, Rich. I mean with the move. With me being able to transfer and the apartment. And Mike and Eddie… There’s… there’s just something about it, isn’t there? Something feels off.”

“You’re thinking too much. Didn’t Mikey tell us way back when that all of that shit only came back after like, what, thirty years? We were like twelve then... so, uh… we’d be like…”

“Forty. We’d be forty.”

“Exactamundo, Stanielson. Plenty o’ time. And didn’t Bev say she saw us fighting It again when we were old, you know, when she was all…” Richie rolled his eyes back and stuck out his tongue. “We’re not old yet, Stan - we’re still in the prime of our youth, are we not?”

Stan sighed, his mouth tight again. “Sure… sure, you’re right. The Derry tragedies were almost always twenty seven years apart. It’s only been ten.”

Richie smiled. “Exactly. Don’t you worry your pretty little face. You’ll get early onset wrinkles.”

“I already have early onset wrinkles. They’re all named Richie.”

“Oh! Gettin’ off a good one, Stan! Chuckalicious.”

Stan smiled, finally, breaking that serious composure that Richie knew so well. “Fine… but the last thing I’ll say is that I still think this all seems too easy. I’m suspicious.”

“You’re always suspicious.”

“It’s a learned response from being your friend.”

“Aw, you mean that, Stan? You’re my friend?” Richie asked, grabbing Stan’s hand from across the console, and pressing it to his heart.

“Ew, gross. You’re sweaty,” Stan responded and pulled his hand away.

Richie laughed hard. “I mean it, though, Stan. You don’t gotta be suspicious.”

“And why’s that?”

“I mean, come on. Think about it. Do you really think part of It’s master plan is to move us all out to New York so… what? It could put us into debt?” Richie said, before he slipped into his Pennywise impression, pulling his smile wide like a clown’s, “ _Couldn’t get ‘em with the giant bird, but let’s see how they handle an inflated cost of living!”_

Stan finally laughed. “Okay… okay. Fine. Maybe you’re right.”

“Ain’t you heard? I’m always right, baby. Listen, you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The way I’m seeing it is this: We all got our shit absolutely  _ handed _ to us for years as kids, yeah? Eddie’s mom, Bev’s dad, Georige. And that’s not even mentioning good ol’ Bowers or, hey, the  _ clown _ .” Richie paused. “And, now? Something good finally happens to us poor sacks and we can’t even accept it. Can’t even fucking believe it. You know why? It’s cause we’re too used to the bad shit. So we’re checking under the bed, reading the fine print. But… Stanny. Maybe, maybe sometimes good things just happen. Maybe this is just a good thing.”

Stan looked at Richie and took a deep breath, before his eyes travelled out to the dusty road around them, the blue sky burning bright above their heads. “That… that was uncharacteristically wise.”

“You  _ wound _ me.”

“But you’re right. You’re right.”

“I know I am. Plus, if you really want the fine print… I think I got what that is.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m at least ninety percent sure that all of our friends have turned into massive jerks. Bill’s gonna be pretentious from all that time in London, and Eddie’s gonna be his mother. Don’t know yet about Mike, but I’m sure there’s something.”

Stan looked at him like he lost his mind. 

Richie continued, “Or… there’s the chance that they’re all gonna be massively successful, rich as all hell, hotter than Swayze, and I’m gonna have to say I’m a bartender.”

“What’s wrong with being a bartender?”

“They’re gonna realize I’m a loser.”

“We’re all losers. There’s nothing new there.”

“They’re not gonna be losers anymore, though. Like I said, they’re all gonna be different people. Four years does a lot, Stan.”

“Hmm.. no. You’re wrong again. And you were doing so good - should have stopped while you were ahead.”

“Just you wait. Bill’s gonna call french fries ‘chips’ and tell us we’re horribly impolite. We’re gonna disrupt his new British sensibilities.”

“I’m done with you.”

“Mike will have moved on. We’re gonna be way too uncool to hang out with him.”

“I’m not listening.”

“Eddie’s going to make us bathe in rubbing alcohol if we want to hang out with him.”

“I’m going to start driving again.”

“If you insist,” Richie said.

They pulled out of the parking lot just as  What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes started up from the speakers and that dread Richie pretended he wasn’t feeling started to settle deeper. They merged back onto the highway, the air conditioning rumbling to full blast, and cooling his sun-hot skin while the road melted into a wavy mirage in front of them, and Richie had to admit, yeah, he had no idea what the fuck was going on.

.

Their new place is  _ nice _ . Although their sunny apartment in L.A. had been nothing to scoff at, it wasn’t like this. No matter what they did with their old place, no matter how many framed paintings of birds they had up, it still kept a distinct college-flavor, mostly present in chipped panelling or mismatched paint jobs. Or abandoned empty cans of beer and stale bags of chips, mostly left by Richie.

Their new place is nothing like that. It came pre-furnished, wooden beds, wooden dressers, couches with no holes or stains, and a fucking television that Richie thought he might as well thank god for. Stan had toured the place on his own a month earlier, telling Richie it was best if he stayed back to get as many hours in as he could so they could have enough money for gas and rent in the time where Richie would be eventually unemployed. When he got back, Stan told Richie the place was nice and his job set him up well, but Richie thought Stan was just being polite. 

He had been wrong. 

Their apartment opens to a living room, kitchen in the back left, enough for two couches and a dining table, and space to walk in between. Stan got the big bedroom on the left, the one with its own bathroom, because he could afford more in rent, and Richie got the room to the right. It was barely a downgrade, though. They even had an extra room by Stan’s, too small to be a proper bedroom, but enough space for Stan to store his bird books and desk, and for Richie to stash his records and comics.

The whole place was unquestionably New York, all exposed brick and dark hardwood floors. Sun filtered in through large windows, and, just beyond, Richie could see snippets of the skyline, a sea of glittering lights, all laid out before him like a promise.

Their cross-country trip ended in the second week of August, and they arrived as a couple of sweaty messes, dark circles and sore legs. The second they crossed under that bridge and erupted out of it, Richie realized something he had forgotten. How much he hated the humidity.

Dragging the boxes and suitcases from Stan’s car quickly broke Richie into enough of a sweat that his shirt is sticking to him and his curls lose their sense of gravity, blooming out and skyward. Stan isn’t faring much better himself, his ironed shirt untucking, and his cheeks flushing red.

“Is Bill gonna show and give us a warm welcome, then?” Stan asks, unpacking the remainder of their mismatching mugs that Richie couldn’t bear to part with into the lilac cupboards of their kitchen.

“Called him back in Jersey,” Richie says, cutting open a box with the same scissors he used to cut his hair. “Said he’d be busy with orientations until the weekend.”

“Well, it’s not like we moved  _ cross country _ for him or anything.”

“Oh, Staniel. Don’t get mad. It’s just the heat talking.”

“I thought California was bad. This is worse.”

“ _ Well, Stan, don’t ya know, it’s not the temperature, it’s the humidity _ .”

“I could kill you.”

“That’s not new.”

“Did you know the rate of murder in New York City greatly increases during the summer?”

“Wow, Stan. That’s a spectacular Eddie impression.”

.

Stan doesn’t have to complain for long.

The next morning, Richie is lying across the longer of their two couches, thumbing through a tour guide of the city, wondering when the fuck his mind was going to catch up to this being his new home, when he heard the knocks. Three raps in quick succession, the same secret knock they used in the clubhouse to let anyone inside know it wasn’t Bowers, or something worse.

Richie’s stomach falls to his ass and he realizes that he’s not quite breathing when those knocks, as familiar as the day they made them up reach his ears. His eyes jump to catch Stan’s, who was standing in the kitchen, struggling to get their new coffee maker to work, his hands now frozen in place.

Richie doesn’t move. Stan does. He taps three times on the counter before he pulls his shoulders back toward his spine, straightens his neck, and walks, almost on tip-toe, to the front door. He takes a quick glance through the peephole, and Richie watches him as he takes a deep shuddering breath, before steeling himself, and swinging open the door.

“H-h-h-hi g-guys,” Bill says, looking just like he did as a kid, nervous and hopeful, but with so much heart in his eyes, enough to make all of them fall in love, just a little bit.

And maybe it’s the sight of those eyes, the ones that they all had to look to when they needed courage deep beneath Derry. Or maybe it’s the stutter, and the way it sounds like a song they’d known since childhood. Or it could be the way Bill’s voice cracks, and lets them know that the distance hurt him too.

The paper bag Bill is holding gets crushed when Stan engulfs him in a hug and sobs into his hair. Richie jumps up too, and the three of them stand there, halfway still in the hallway, arms tight around each other, wondering exactly why it had been that they all separated so long ago.

Bill had gotten them bagels, and they’re shoving them into their mouths around the circular yellow-wood table that came with the apartment.

“Bill, I thought you were just exaggerating when you said bagels from New York were better,” Stan says with a quick giggle.

“I know my b-b-bagels, Stanley,” Bill says with a laugh.

“How were the bagels in London?” Richie asks. “Do the stuffy old Brits even  _ have _ bagels?”

Bill laughs. “Actually, for breakfast, they do b-b-beans on t-toast.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Richie says, fake gagging. “Like baked beans? On like bread? Toast bread?”

“W-what other kinds of b-b-bread are there?”

“Richie, don’t judge the British. Accept that you’re only as cultured from L.A. to Maine,” Stanley says with another quick giggle into his hand.

“And you aren’t? Have I been hallucinating you living in the same place as me since the moment we popped outta our moms’ vaginas?”

“Oh, Richie, please,” Stan says with a grimace.

“What, Stan? Calling me immature for making fun of beans on toast but you can’t handle the word ‘vagina’?”

“I’d just prefer not to think of my own mother’s.”

Bill laughs then. “You t-two haven’t changed.”

“Hard to change much when you live with the same guy you went to middle school with,” Stan says.

“The same guy who popped out of his mom’s-”

“Richie! Beep beep, Jesus,” Stan says with another laugh.

But Richie turns to Bill. “Stan said he thought you’d have changed. He said you’d be all pretentious and annoying because you lived in London for four years.”

Stan’s mouth falls open. “I did not! Richie was the one-”

“Stanley, it’s fine. Clearly, Bill hasn’t changed so it’s okay that you were worried,” Richie says.

Stan turns to Bill, his face in protest, “Bill, you can’t believe a word he says.”

“I n-n-never have,” Bill laughs. 

“Oh, that ain’t true, Billy-boy. In the seventh grade I got you to believe that Greta Keene said she wanted to give you a blowjob behind the gym.”

“Y-you definitely didn’t. I did not b-b-believe you for a second. You got Eh-Eddie to believe you,” Bill says, before turning to Stanley. “And… I d-d-deserve it, about the L-London thing. But don’t worry. My d-dorm was small and most of my dinners were f-fast food. J-just like you two, I’m sure.” 

“No, Stan had us eating three square meals a day the second we got out there. All nutrients and health smoothies. Didn’t want me to get scurvy,” Richie says before adding, “Like that exists.”

“Scurvy fucking exists, Richie. I’m not having this conversation with you again.”

“I t-truh-truly salute you, Stan, for making it f-f-four years l-living with the trashmouth,” Bill adds.

“I deserve a medal, honestly.”

“Nah, Stan loved it. We cuddled at night,” Richie adds. “All four years.”

“We did  _ not _ .”

Bill laughs, crumpling up the paper his bagel had come in. “I’m... I’m j-j-jealous if I’m being honest. I w-w-wish I hadn’t been alone.”

At this, Richie’s laugh falls quiet. He reaches across the table to pat Bill on the hand. “We missed you too, Big Bill.”

Stan nods his agreement. “We really did. We missed everyone.”

“Ever since Bev left… then Ben. Things haven’t been the same,” Richie says. “Things all just kind of, well, changed, yeah?”

“And didn’t stop,” Stan says. “Changing, that is.”

“No… things never were the same after that, I g-g-guess. Not like... Well, not like after everything else, h-h-h-huh?” Bill asks. 

Richie shakes his head.

“But, at least the f-f-five of us will be back now,” Bill says.

Stan smiles again, lighting his face up. “I can’t wait for them to get here.”

“Bill… you still haven’t told them, right?” Richie asks.

“What?” Stan asks, and blinks. Once. Twice.

Bill sighs, deep. “R-R-Richie… he’s forcing me to keep you two a secret from M-Mike and Eddie. Wouldn’t let me t-t-tell them that you were coming-”

“Richard, what the  _ fuck _ ?” Stan asks, interrupting Bill. “Why?”

Richie feels his cheeks go warm. “Wanna be a surprise…”

Bill shrugs. “I th-think he’s just trying to see if he c-can finally kill Eddie w-with a heart attack.”

“I’m - I can’t believe you. Richie, you’re insane,” Stan says.

“I know, I know. I just… I wanna make it a surprise,” Richie says with a shrug.

Bill shakes his head. “I’ll never understand y-y-you. But, to answer your question, no. I haven’t t-t-t-told Eddie. Or Mike.”

Richie turns to Stan, expecting more judgment or words, but Stan just watches him, his eyebrows furrowed, like when he’s trying to solve an accounting problem, or make out the kind of bird flying high above them in the sky.

The rest of their brunch goes quickly, Bill needing to leave to get to the orientation he was then late for and Stan and Richie needing to get back to unpacking their lives, still tied up in boxes.

Richie spends the rest of the night circling job advertisements in the newspaper and making phone calls to see if anywhere in the whole city would take his sorry ass in, hoping that they didn’t make drinks differently on the East Coast.

.

A week later, the apartment had warmed even further, and Stanley still hadn't gotten the coffee maker to work. Richie is home alone, nursing at a beer, and staring at the city skyline, wondering if, at its core, it really was any different from L.A. or Derry. He remembers days like this, watching the clouds pass in the sky and laying in a field next to Bev, talking about how they’d see this very city one day, leave behind Derry and everything in it. Except their friends, of course, they’d agree. They’d never leave each other behind. They’d all slot back together at one point, and it wouldn’t feel like a day had passed. Richie asked if she thought it would happen before It came back. Bev told him not to worry about the finer details.

It’s the memory of Bev’s smile ( _ the one that could come back despite it all _ ) that makes Richie consider that New York wouldn’t feel like home until they were all there. Until they were all under the same sky again. 

That’s when Richie gets two more phone calls.

The first was from a bar called The Ruby, and the guy on the line told Richie the manager liked him enough to hire him and he started next Wednesday.

Richie didn’t think things could get better.

Until he got the second call from Bill, to tell him that Ben was there too,  _ could you believe it? _

And it all hit Richie like a punch to the face. After thinking he’d never get to go back to nights in the clubhouse, smoking cigarettes and thinking he’d never get old, the thought of all six of them, there,  _ (despite it all) _ made him nearly buckle over to laugh or cry.

But it wouldn’t be complete. Not without Bev, the only person who seemed to get Richie, get the way he worked and get the reason for all of his dramatics. And Richie had no idea where the fuck she was. He hadn’t heard from her since graduation, when other things had been on his mind. He read the postcard, the Lincoln Memorial on one side, Bev’s handwriting on the other, which said he better have finally pulled his head out of his ass and did the thing he’s wanted to do since he was twelve. Or earlier. He was already crying when he got the card, and reading the words, and her little x’s all signed with love from Red, made Richie think he might run out of tears. He didn’t know what would be left at the bottom.

And, he thinks, even though Bill had been the same… he can’t be sure about the rest. Can’t be sure he’d recognize them or if the dials on their lives would have gone a notch too high and they’d be cooked something different, something Richie wouldn’t be able to recognize.

Stan would say it’s guilt that’s causing Richie to think like this. To read the fine print. Bev would call it anxiety or a manifestation of his own self-loathing. And Eddie… Richie didn’t know what Eddie would say and that’s the whole fucking point.

But they are  _ six  _ now. And for that, Richie is grateful. Even if the pit in his stomach is reminding him that it’s incomplete, and that he doesn’t know if six counts the same in New York as it did in Derry.

But if their six became seven…

Then maybe Stan was right to wonder if the turtle was watching, back to playing chess with their lives.

.

Friday comes, despite it all.

Hot as hell, humid thick enough to make Richie feel he’s swimming, but it’s the day that Eddie and Mike are meant to get in. Meant to be in the same city that Richie had driven 3,000 miles to get to, just so he could be here, about to run to Eddie’s place, like he’d done all his life. Until he didn’t anymore.

Richie has a shift that day at The Ruby, but he has just enough time in the overlap before it starts and after the time Eddie and Mike were meant to arrive. He takes the subway to the West Village, where Eddie’s apartment,  _ holy shit Eddie’s apartment _ , is supposed to be. He follows the directions that Stan helped him scribble down the night prior and he’s running because his heart is already pounding so he might as well put it to good work. Everything about this, from the moment he got that phone call, nearly two months ago, to the humidity that surrounds him now and presses his hair to his temples is unreal and hazy. New York feels like a dream around him, the beginning of a sunset, the air like bathwater and the miraculous fact that Richie was running to see Eddie in real life, in person, for the first time since graduation.

Since… 

_ (Best to not think about that day now if Richie wants to make it to Eddie’s place without keeling over and dying in the street from a heart attack. _ )

He doesn’t think much of the building when he gets there, sweaty and panting. It’s a building like any other, except it contains Eddie Kaspbrak, and Richie only knew Eddie in a home like a prison with a warden that kept him locked safe and away. Someone lets him in and he books it up the narrow staircase to #21B, Eddie and Mike’s. 

It’s amazing, the clarity you get when you’re seconds away from a tipping point.

He should have gone back to Derry earlier. He should have written more. He shouldn’t have let his nerves, his insecurity, and his goddamn self-loathing have gotten him here, four years away from the last time he saw Eddie face to face, not just a fading polaroid, bent at the edges.

He stands in front of the door and he can’t knock. He can’t see what’s on the other side. He already drove 3,000 miles, left everything he had built on the other side of the country, moved into a city he had never even visited, but he can’t knock on this door. Can’t see what awaits on the other side.

Weren’t they all meant to be meeting tomorrow, anyway? Maybe Eddie and Mike were still driving, and hadn’t even gotten here yet. Traffic probably sucked ass, if it’s anything like L.A. Maybe this is a stupid idea and maybe he should have just had Bill tell Eddie that he’d be there too. Maybe, if he had done that, if he had just fucking braved up and done that, then Eddie could have decided not to come for himself. Could have picked another city. Maybe that’s why Richie needed it to be a surprise, so Eddie couldn’t have gotten the chance to say no when he found out who would be there too. 

But maybe it was worth it, because it got Eddie the fuck out of Derry, so maybe Eddie can just handle Richie being here too, and maybe he won’t be so mad, and isn’t there a chance that Eddie might have missed him back?

Is there a chance?

Richie thinks he might as well turn back. Maybe Stan misses California.

But the door opens.

And Richie has to blink twice because Eddie looks the same, but with four years that Richie will never know tied to his face.

Then Richie smiles.

And he speaks.

“Well, hello, Eddie Spaghetti. Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!! I really hope you like this and I'm sorry to drop off at the same place as my last chapter :( but I have the next chapter written and it's coming soon, I promise!! I'm so excited to keep writing this fic, and I really hope you all enjoyed! Please let me know what you thought, if you have a moment or feel so inclined, and I hope to see you soon.


	3. Chapter Three - Enough Stalling

**Chapter Three - Enough Stalling**

_“We can talk it so good_

_We can make it so divine_

_We can talk it good_

_How you wish it would be all the time.”_

_-Lorde (Ribs)_

**June 24th 1990**

  
  


“ _Richie!”_

Beverly Marsh had been hoping for peace and quiet. The day was hot and long, and she was tired from a week spent up late, talking to Ben on the phone or sneaking out with Richie to smoke cigarettes on the Kissing Bridge. The Fourth of July was only just around the corner, summer hadn’t gone full swing yet, and she wanted to linger in that forecast of freedom and potential. School days and homework, and all the cold boredom of being locked up at home with _him_ were far in the future, not something she had to worry about with the chirp of crickets in her ear, and the breeze thick and heavy against her legs. No, she still had time. 

Her pale skin had already started to freckle from the days they had already spent lounging around the quarry or biking through Derry’s streets, screaming and yelling like they were the only people in the world. And they might as well have been, with the way people seemed to ignore them after the prior summer. They had been granted a sort of freedom now that there was no Henry and his gang of murderous teenagers, watching them from the bushes with shiny pocket knives and horrible intentions. And, more importantly, there was no clown. Not yet, anyway. Not now. The only demons they had left were the ones that hid in their very houses, bred from the same evil brought forth by that otherworldly beast. 

But in the summer, they didn’t have to stay home and marinate in that misery. They could escape. The summer heat made her dad lethargic ever since his _accident_ , and she had an easier out. She got to spend her days running wild through the greenery, laying under the sun, and surrounding herself with people she knows in her heart love her more than anyone else ever has, instead of hiding in her room and hoping no one comes knocking.

She was sitting on the edge of one of Mike’s old farm quilts, all reds and blues, her back against the alcove between two rocks towering above her. A magazine that she had pilfered from Keene’s pharmacy sat on the top of her thighs and she was chewing on the plastic end of a thick black sharpie, also stolen. She was considering ways she might be able to turn old clothing of hers into these new styles, or if she’d have to try to find new stuff from a thrift store in Bangor, and if maybe Richie’s parents, or maybe even Ben’s mom, might be able to take them some weekend. Or maybe she could just convince Richie to take the bus with her, an easy bribe with movie tickets, if it came to that.

But those thoughts shot clear out of her head when Richie burst his way through the green that separated this beachier area from the rest of the forest, a fumbling mess, with a face that told Beverly he had done something very _Richie_.

“Beverly, help!” Richie shouted, leaping through the sand and scrambling over the quilt, his hands fumbling around him in frantic chaos. He kicked a clump of sand onto the quilt and across Bev’s bare legs. 

“Richie, what the fuck?” She shouted, jumping off and trying to rub the grit off.

“Bev - Beverly, you have to help me. He’s gonna murder me,” Richie said, grabbing her around the middle and ducking behind her back into the alcove of space she had previously been occupying.

“You probably deserve it. What did you do?” Bev asked, shrugging off his cold wet hands as he hid behind her body. He peeked over her shoulder, leaning his weight on the quilt instead, and barely breathing.

Before Richie could answer, Eddie burst through the same greenery and pointed his finger past Bev and over her shoulder.

“Bev. Move. I need to commit a crime,” Eddie said, his face flushed and panting.

“What did - _oh_ ,” Beverly said, before she fell into a fit of laughter in her magazine.

“I thought you’d like it!” Richie shouted from behind Beverly, accidentally kneeing her in the back. She elbowed his leg back in protest.

“My mom is going to _kill_ me,” Eddie said.

Across his chest, drawn in thick globs of sunscreen, were the letters ‘R.T.’ surrounded by a thick, looping heart. Eddie wiped off the edge of the paste with his thumb, revealing the skin beneath it to be paler than the rest of his suntanned torso, leaving behind a tattoo in the negative of his tan. Eddie groaned, wiped the sunscreen on the corner of his swimsuit, and focused his attention back to Richie, who was laughing his ass off into Bev’s hair.

“This is gonna stick around to Halloween _at least_. I cannot believe you,” Eddie said, barking loudly over the sound of Beverly’s own laughter.

“Oh, come on, Eds, I just wanted to give you a way to let everyone know who your favorite person in the world is!” Richie said, before ducking back behind Beverly’s head.

“ _Favorite!_ Ugh… you, you _fucker_!” Eddie said, barely forming words, and shifting from his left foot to his right, trying to find a way around Beverly.

“How’d you even manage that one?” Bev asked, not moving, less to protect Richie, and more because she couldn’t be bothered.

“He fell asleep in the sun. Thought he could use some protection,” Richie explained and Beverly snorted.

Eddie’s color rose higher. “Come on, Richie! Stop fucking hiding. Get out here and face me like a man- Bev, _stop fucking laughing!_ ”

“I am no such thing, and, as such, I will do no such thing,” Richie said, ducking again behind Beverly. She elbowed him again. 

“ _Richie!_ ” Eddie yelled again.

“You left the sunscreen right next to you! What was I supposed to do? I was inspired. Like an artist,” Richie explained.

“Not _deface_ me!” Eddie said, suddenly glancing from the sand and back to Beverly, his fingers twitching.

“Eddie, if you even think about throwing sand toward me, I will do much worse things to you,” Beverly intercepted.

Eddie scrunched up his face, and crossed his arms.

“It’s not my fault that you’re such a deep sleeper!” Richie said.

“I can’t believe you! I was only asleep because you kept me up all night talking about that stupid video game! I was only tired because of _you_!” 

“Eddie, I left you _artwork_ on your _skin_ so you can remember how much you love me! It’s so I stay in your heart forever! I thought you’d like it!”

“Like it? _Like it?_ ”

“Yeah! Don’t you like it?”

“No!”

“It’s so you remember me!”

“Trashmouth, I will never forget you no matter how hard I try.”

“Aw, you mean that, Eds?”

“ _That’s not my_ \- Beverly, please. Please move. Please. He needs to pay for his crimes. Please.”

At the same moment, they heard a distant shout.

“Bev!” Mike shouted from deeper into the green. “Can you come and help us with the stove? We can’t get it to work.”

Beverly sighed, still smiling. “Looks like your time is up, Richie. Don’t forget to leave me your cigarettes when you die,” she said before standing up and slipping her green flip-flops on. She walked away, turning back only to say, “Have at, Eds. Make him regret it.”

“Shit.”

Eddie tackled Richie into the quilt, grinning like a madman. He held Richie by the wrists, brutally strong as always, and grabbed at the globs of sunscreen still on his chest. He smeared the cream into Richie’s face, messing up his glasses and dragging it across his cheeks. Richie laughed and squirmed, trying to buck Eddie off, but he was no match for Eddie’s rage.

Richie kicked his knees up, throwing Eddie off balance just enough for Richie to dig his fingers into Eddie’s ribs, causing Eddie to shriek back in laughter, and lose just enough of his vantage point. Richie wiped off the sunscreen from Eddie’s chest, revealing more of his handiwork, and smeared it across the side of Eddie’s neck, the furthest he could reach.

“Are you two done?” Stanley said, interrupting their chaos only momentarily. Richie and Eddie stilled to look over to Stan who was standing with his hands in his pockets, head tilted and unamused.

“Stanley! Did you even _see_ what he did to me?” Eddie asked, still poised atop Richie, trapping him.

Stan just rolled his eyes and went back to the group.

Eddie turned back to Richie, bloodlust returning.

“Eddie, Eddie, _please_. Have mercy. You’re going about this all the wrong way,” Richie begged, trying to shake Eddie off of him.

Eddie dug his fingers one final time into Richie’s ribs, before groaning and rolling off of him to lay back against the quilt, his smile melting off his face. He picked at the ends of his fraying watch and said, “My mom’s gonna lose it,” before moving his hands to his chest, to rub in the remainder of the sunscreen. It went clear, revealing the finished work of the blurry sun tattoo, stark against the tan Eddie had been building over the past month.

Richie propped himself up on his elbow to look at Eddie, glancing at the tattoo with a half smile, “Just don’t let her catch you shirtless.”

Eddie chewed the inside of his cheek. “Maybe,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Richie said, quieter.

Eddie just rolled his eyes and smiled, gently nudging Richie’s knee with his own. He leaned in with a whisper and said, “Maybe we should try and get Bill next.”

Richie’s face lit up. “Nah, that son-of-a-bitch sleeps with one eye open. It would never work.”

“Who then?”

“Stan?”

“As if. He doesn’t fall asleep at the quarry. I don’t think he falls asleep unless it’s nighttime.”

“Good point. He’s too square. Bev?”

“No, that’s no good. She already saw what you did to me. She’ll be expecting it.”

“You’re right,” Richie said, turning over onto his stomach. “I don’t wanna face her wrath anyways. Guess it was just a once in a lifetime prank.”

Eddie’s face quirked back up into a smirk. “Don’t be so fucking sure. You nod off for a second and your ass is grass.”

“Is that so?” Richie asked. “Got any ideas on what you’re gonna write yet? How ya gonna fuck me up?”

Eddie bit back his smile. “Just you wait, Tozier. I’m gonna make you regret this.”

“Pretty confident coming from a guy who’s still bearing my initials.”

“You really are the worst. They’re really gonna last until Halloween. Or Christmas.”

“It’ll be gone by August,” Richie assured him with a smile, considering jumping over to pick Eddie up and toss him into the quarry. Before he could, though, he heard the clanging sound of metal falling to the ground and Stan yelling.

“ _Richie! Eddie! Swear to fucking god, you said you would help!_ ” Stan shouted.

Both boys scrambled, fighting to get up first, and ran through the bramble to find the rest of the group. Eddie ran faster, beating Richie and dashing forward until they were all surrounding a pile of rocks, the little firepit Ben had built. Mike was kneeled in the middle of it all with a screwdriver, tinkering at the underside of the camper’s stove.

“Are you sure it’s the right kind of propane?” Ben asked, from his spot by the cooler.

“Yes,” Bill said. “We used t-t-to use it all th-the t-time. It’s the r-r-right kind of p-propane.”

“Okay, okay. Just thought I’d ask,” Ben said, glancing at Beverly with a sheepish smile that she returned.

“What’s the point of all of this again? I was fine with the peanut butter and jellies,” Stan said, further away from the group and leaning his shoulder against a tree.

Richie came up behind him and clasped his hands to Stan’s shoulders, which he shrugged off quickly. “It’s American, Stanley. This is an American tradition,” Richie said, moving to lean back instead against the brittle bark of the tree.

“Yeah, Mister Patriot?” Beverly said, from over by Bill, her eyes twinkling. “You’re a shining beacon of Americana? Weren’t you just yesterday calling the president the antichrist?”

“Bush has nothing to do with hot dogs, Beverly,” Richie said. “Except for the fact that he sucks dick. And hot dogs look like dicks. But other than that, no correlation.”

“Beep beep,” Bill said. “Eh-Eddie, do you th-think you could t-take a l-luh-look at this?”

“Sure,” Eddie said, kneeling down beside Mike.

“You’re the one who sucks dicks, Tozier,” Bev said.

“Why does Richie think Bush is the antichrist?” Ben asked.

“Because Richie doesn’t have a brain and it’s the first word he could think of,” Stanley said.

“I just pay attention to politics, unlike you losers,” Richie said. “And you don’t like Bush, either, Stanley.”

“I agree with Stan,” Eddie said.

“That Richie doesn’t have a brain?” Mike asked. “Or that you don’t like Bush.”

“All of those. Especially that Richie doesn’t have a brain. But, I more so meant that we should have stuck with PB and J’s,” Eddie explained, twisting off bolts from the camping stove. “Do you know how many Americans get third degree burns every year trying to do exactly this?”

“Just as many that get Chlamydia from your mom every year, eh, Eds?” Richie said, putting his palm up for a high-five from Stanley that he didn’t receive.

Eddie turned around to glare.

“Richie! Stop d-d-distracting him,” Bill said.

“Will you hit him for me, Stanley?” Eddie asked, returning his focus to the stove.

“No.”

“Cause I’m Stan’s favorite,” Richie smiled.

“ _No_. I’m just not getting involved,” Stan said.

“Good choice, Stan,” Mike said with a laugh.

“Someone has to make them here,” Stan said.

“Besides, I’m S-Stan’s f-fuh-favorite,” Bill said.

“Last time Ben got involved, the clubhouse almost went to the ground,” Bev said.

“Please don’t remind me,” Ben said. 

“I think I’m actually Stan’s favorite,” Mike said.

“I don’t pick favorites,” Stan said.

“Eddie, how many people die a year from fireworks?” Richie asked. “Bev and I have plans to set them off at the quarry.”

“We do?” Bev asked.

“A lot. Or they lose fingers,” Eddie said. “And I’m very obviously Stan’s favorite.”

Bill laughed. “Richie if you lose your f-fuh-fingers, you’re gonna have a m-muh-much worse time entertaining little Richie.”

“No, I won’t. I have Eddie’s-”

Eddie jumped up again and grabbed Richie by the sides, wrestling him to the ground, abandoning the stove in the firepit.

“You caused that one, Bill,” Beverly said, walking forward to try investigating the stove, or at least the rocks that sat in a perfect formation around it.

From their pile, Eddie shouted, “It’s fine! I fixed it!” before putting Richie in a headlock.

“What a relief,” Mike said, turning to the cooler. He and Bill hefted it up, the cold water and ice sloshing inside, as they brought it closer to the firepit.

“Should we stop them?” Ben asked.

“Not if you want to keep _your_ fingers,” Stan said.

“This is just their mating ritual,” Bev added only loud enough for Ben and Stan to hear.

Stan laughed and Ben went red, and the three of them started setting up chairs, abandoning the wrestling boys to return to the food. Soon, the smell of smoky meat and the sweet syrup of watermelon wafted through the air, and the forest went silent when everyone’s mouths were full.

.

A few hours later, content and sun-tired, Richie and Eddie were walking their bikes back to Eddie’s house. The sun was setting and the whole road was cast in a dusky purple haze and the sound of cicadas thrummed through the air. 

“You think Bill’s gonna really be able to get us into that movie?” Eddie asked, now dressed, the evidence of Richie’s prank hidden beneath his polo shirt.

“What, _Robocop 2?_ ” Richie asked, attempting to pat back his curls that were sticky with the water from the quarry.

“Yeah.”

“He said he found a way through in the back of the Aladdin,” Richie said. 

“How’d he do that?”

“I think he’s lying. I think he’s just hooking up with Gloria Roth. She works the popcorn,” Richie said. “She’s probably just letting him in so they can swap spit in the nosebleeds.”

“Ew, Gloria? Gross,” Eddie said with a frown.

“What, Eds? Don’t like blondes?” Richie asked.

“What? No - don’t call me that,” Eddie said, his face running red.

“I think Gloria’s hot.”

“Good for you. Or good for Bill, I guess,” Eddie said.

They rounded up the street to Eddie’s house, and Richie’s bike squeaked to a stop beside him.

“You really think your mom’s gonna lose it?” Richie asked.

Eddie looked at his house, then back at Richie. In the light, Richie could pick out the freckles across the bridge of Eddie’s nose, and the way the setting sun cast gold in his brown hair. “I dunno. She’s gonna say I’m gonna get skin cancer probably. Or…” Eddie paused, glanced at Richie nervously. “Or, you know. Just the same old shit. She’ll be mad that I was in the sun and she’ll blame it on you all or whatever. Or she’s gonna say it’s a weird rash and make me go to the doctor. I hate it when she does that.”

Richie paused and shuffled his feet against the asphalt. “I’m sorry,” he said, before looking at Eddie’s house, too. He always hated it, and the way it hid behind hanging leaves, not natural, but ominous, like it was trying to tuck itself away from the rest of the world. Something about it reminded Richie of being a kid, sick and locked up with your own fever, just waiting until you can get better and see the sun again.

But, Eddie smiled. “It’s okay. You got me good.”

And Richie smiled again, his eyes falling to Eddie even in the growing darkness. “I’ll see ya tomorrow, if your mom doesn’t take you to the hospital saying you got an Ecuadorian rash or something. Just tell her you got a Tozier rash, and it’s completely harmless.”

“I don’t think a Tozier rash would be harmless. And I think if I said I had a Tozier rash, then she’d lock me up for the rest of the summer.”

“Good point,” Richie said with a smile, mounting his bike again. “Go with the Ecuadorian one, then.”

“I don’t want to tell her it’s a rash at all.”

“Also valid. Tell her it was just your body’s natural reaction to being my best friend. Perfectly natural.”

“It’s like you want me to be locked up for good.”

“Eddie Spaghetti, that would be a fate worse than death.”

“Then I’ll try to make sure she doesn’t see it at all.”

“Smart.”

“Quarry again tomorrow? Or the clubhouse?” Eddie asked, thumbing at the edge of his handlebars.

“I think Mike said we could come over to his barn. He wants to play that card game he wouldn’t stop talking about.”

“Oh yeah. Well, if we’re gonna be there, then bring the new Spider-Man. I wanna read it.”

“I will!” Richie said, as he started to coast down the road, his unbuttoned shirt flying out from his arms like wings.

“Don’t forget!” Eddie shouted again. But he wouldn’t mind too much if Richie forgot. They had all summer. 

Later, after narrowly avoiding his mom, and getting back to his room scot-free, Eddie was looking in the mirror and tracing the line of the suntan tattoo. His fingers looped around the edges of the heart, and traced the blurry center where Richie’s initials were drawn crudely. It was already fading, earlier than both he and Richie predicted. And he was surprised to realize he didn’t want it to fade. Not just yet.

**August 29th 1997**

_“Well, hello, Eddie Spaghetti. Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes?”_

When the door opened to Eddie, the first time he’d seen him in over four years, Richie expected there would be more fanfare. Not like he thought fireworks would go off or horns would play. Just maybe that _something_ would happen. Maybe that Eddie might hug him. Or at least smile. Or do anything other than just stare at Richie like he was going door to door selling newspapers, and was nothing but a mild inconvenience.

“Rich-” Eddie finally says, before his throat seems to close up, choking him off mid-word, his eyes bugging out of his skull. He turns around and his sneakers squeak against the wooden floor, when he runs over to the left in the apartment. Richie watches as he digs through the fanny pack, the same one he had in high school, that had been left open on the kitchen counter.

“Shit,” Richie says, watching as Eddie shoots two pumps of his inhaler into his reddening face, bracing himself against the lip of the counter. “You okay?”

Eddie turns to him, his breaths still shaking. “What are- how did you know... What the _fuck?_ ”

“Uh, Bill. He gave me your address,” Richie says, still in the doorway. “Can, uh. Can I come in?”

“What?” Eddie asks, before suddenly realizing and shaking his head, still confused. “What - oh. Uh, yeah. Come in, I guess.”

Richie steps through the threshold into the stuffy apartment, taking note of the empty floors and Eddie’s haphazard luggage and boxes, all centered around the edge of the apartment, by the front door. Like he could pull them back out at any second.

“Nice place,” Richie says, watching the sun dance across the wood, all golden and honey. But, truthfully, any place Eddie lived would be nice, as long as it was anywhere _other_ than his mother's house.

“Shut up,” Eddie says, surprising Richie out of the stupor of seeing Eddie again for the first time in what feels like decades. He looks up and catches, for only a brief moment, the face of the child Eddie once was, hellbent and caring, all juxtaposition and furious for it.

“I’m serious,” Richie says. “I mean, what’s not to love? It’s like an apartment and a sauna, all wrapped up in one.”

“ _Ugh_ , I know. So fucking hot, dude. I think it’s the angle of the sun on the windows or something,” Eddie says.

“Nah. It’s just ‘cause I’m here,” Richie says with a dumb smile.

“That’s a lame joke. I’ve heard it before.”

“ _Lame joke?_ What, did you major in, like, joke critiquing? _Excuse me_ , for not realizing I was in the presence of an _expert._ ”

“I majored in cartography.”

“Like fancy writing? I didn’t-”

“No, jackass. Maps. What, did California make you even stupider or something?” Eddie asks.

“Mighta been the weed.”

Eddie scoffs. “Figures.”

They pause, the only sound in the apartment becoming the distant sounds of traffic, car horns and engines. Richie looks out the window to the glare of the sun, and can faintly see pigeons, crossing from telephone wires.

Eddie sighs. “What are you doing here? Visiting Bill?”

“Oh… uh. Not quite,” Richie says, because, even now, the words can’t come easily.

“Then what? You fly all the way out here to visit Mike? He’s not in until tomorrow,” Eddie says.

“What? Oh… yeah. I was gonna ask where he was,” Richie lies, because, there, under Eddie’s familiar stare, he had completely forgotten that Mike was supposed to be here too.

“Ben?” Eddie asks again.

“No - Jesus. I just, uh. Maybe I’m here to visit you,” Richie says, even though it’s not true, but he’s bugged because Eddie has only suggested other people and Richie doesn’t know why Eddie would find it so unbelievable that he’d be here to see him.

“ _Really?_ You’re here to visit me? Why’d you wait until now? Had plenty of time over the past four years.”

 _Oh yeah. That’s why_. Richie tries to ignore the sting. “Uh… Cause I’m not visiting?” Richie offers instead, no longer able to escape the words, and needing a way out of the other conversation Eddie had started.

“What? What are you talking about?” Eddie says.

“I… I moved here. Uh…” Richie gulps when Eddie’s eyebrows furrow just like they did when they were kids and Richie said something equally as ridiculous as what he was saying now. “I… yeah. Stan and I. We graduated and all. Bill called us, so we moved here. Lower East Side. I guess.”

Eddie doesn’t react, continuing to stare. “You’re unbelievable. Is this another joke?” he asks, his hand migrating to his face.

“Uh… no?” Richie says.

“You really moved out here?”

“Yes.”

“To New York?”

“ _Yes_.”

“You’re not fucking with me?”

“No.”

“Fuck.” 

“Yeah.”

Suddenly, Eddie begins sliding down the wall from where he was leaning, until he’s sitting with his legs out in front of him on the floor. He puts his palms down on the wood, as if he’s trying to listen to it through his hands, like Bill used to pretend to do in the dirt when they’d play in the woods.

Richie walks over and sits cross-legged in front of him, right on the floor, warm under the setting sun. “I told Bill to let me surprise you.”

“Of course you did,” Eddie says.

“Are you surprised?”

Eddie pulls his hands up from the wood and looks Richie in the eyes. “Of course, I’m fucking surprised - are you joking? Haven’t heard from you in years and now you’re sitting across from me in my fucking _New York_ apartment, telling me you moved out here too. There’s not a thing about this that is anything _less_ than surprising.”

That guilt from earlier comes back, wrapping tighter around his heart. “You’re right. Sorry.”

Eddie takes a breath, staring at Richie with that same furrowed glare. But his face softens and he smiles for the first time that afternoon. “You hear that Ben is here too? Did Bill tell you?”

“Yeah,” Richie laughs. “It’s nuts.”

“Have you seen him yet?”

“No, have you?”

“Nope. Haven’t even seen Bill,” Eddie says.

Richie laughs. “You move out to New York for ol’ Bill and you haven’t even seen him yet?”

“I just got in, man. Besides, I didn’t move out here for Bill.”

“You didn’t?” Richie asks. He thought they all moved out here for Bill. Well… Bill and other reasons.

“I moved out here for me.”

 _Oh._ Richie nods and turns back to the sun behind him as it casts through the windows, highlighting dust, floating across Eddie’s apartment. He’s not quite ready for Eddie to see the way his eyes sting for just a moment. He collects himself before he turns around to say, “I’m… um. Proud of you.”

Eddie seems to go red, despite all the honey gold. “Took me long enough, yeah?”

“You and Mike both.”

“Yeah.”

Richie takes another deep breath. “Bill’s the total same, by the way. So is Stan, if you were curious. Well, not perfectly the same. I think I broke him for good about two years ago.”

“You lived together the whole time in L.A.?”

“Hell yeah.”

“Poor Stan.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Richie asks, feeling the corners of his mouth teasing up to a smile.

And so do Eddie’s, and it’s beautiful, and Richie kicks himself for thinking that photographs were good enough.

Richie nudges his foot forward and presses it to the side of Eddie’s grey running sneaker. “I missed you,” he says, watching their feet instead, because it’s better than watching Eddie’s face, and having to deal with whatever it is that may cross it.

“I missed you, too.”

Richie feels his heart against his chest. He looks up and Eddie looks so warm, his eyes so easy on Richie’s. It’s all almost too much, with the setting sun, the stuffy heat, and the four years of distance that seem to be evaporating before his eyes.

“Think I missed your mom more, though.”

Eddie jumps up and pushes Richie back, tackling him to the ground and laughing. He’s still just as ferocious, and just as strong as he always had been. But the moment doesn’t last long, because they’re not kids anymore, and he jumps up quickly, reaching a hand out to help pull Richie to his feet. When Eddie’s hand grasps Richie’s sweaty forearm, it’s warm, just as it always had been. The same Eddie with the golden sun in his skin, and hands so warm you’d think he was made of fire. 

When they’re both up again, Eddie jumps forward and engulfs Richie in a hug. It shouldn’t feel so familiar because they’re taller and older, but it does, and Richie could melt, because it’s like he’s a kid again, underwater in the quarry or fighting for his life covered in filth. It’s like high school, and he’s standing in the hallway or ducked beneath the bleachers hugging his best friend in the world, hoping nobody could see how much the touch meant to him. Those feelings all come back, and his hand pulses in the same pain he felt when he first got Bill’s call, but he loves it. Despite it all, he loves it.

Eddie pulls away again and pats Richie on the shoulder. “Are you and Stan going to be at dinner tomorrow?”

“Yessir. Stan and I will be gracing the _rest of youse_ with our presence, even though we are now superior Californians,” Richie says. “ _Cowabunga_.”

“Bill went to London, Richie. He has you beat.”

“Good point. I wish he’d of picked up an accent, though. Woulda been much more fun to make fun of.”

“I’m sure you’ll find other things.”

“You know me so well.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and checks his watch, prompting Richie to do the same. And it’s too late. If Richie stays any longer, he’ll miss his shift that he had only just gotten.

“Aw shit,” Richie says. “I gotta go.”

“Already? You just-”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. My shift is starting,” Richie says.

“Shift where?”

“I’m bartending. Place called The Ruby. It’s in Midtown.”

Eddie looks Richie up and down. “You know, I was gonna ask about the clothing. Thought L.A. made you goth,” Eddie says, gesturing to Richie’s all black ensemble.

“Nah. Been there, done that. Freshman year.”

“Huh. Eyeliner and everything?”

“Uh huh. And Doc Martens to match. Gotta go full out.”

Eddie hums. 

“You should come by sometime to the bar. I’ll make you free drinks,” Richie says.

“It’s like you want to get fired.”

“They'll understand when they see how cute you are.”

“Oh, _shut up_ , Richie,” Eddie says and turns away from him.

“What? It’s just facts.”

Eddie rolls his eyes but Richie smiles. He missed the way Eddie would blush like this. He missed a lot.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” Richie asks.

Eddie nods.

And, begrudgingly Richie walks to the door, all five steps of the way. Eddie follows him and opens it, and Richie doesn’t want to go so soon. Even though they’d see each other tomorrow, even though this finally wasn’t a real goodbye, but actually a hello. Even though they didn’t talk about graduation and might never, and that was _fine_ , Richie still doesn’t want to go.

“Bye Richie. I still can’t believe you’re here.”

“You and me both,” Richie says and turns, heading down the hallway and back into the humid heat outside. It’s probably for the better, though, that he’s leaving now, because Richie is starting to get a little overwhelmed. Emotions he had locked up for years, buried under piles of rubble as heavy and crushing as the crumbling bits of the old Neibolt house are all starting to well up, break free in stinging releases. His eyes are watering and his face is hot, and he’s trying to breathe his way through it, trying to choke it all down, bury it the way he knows how.

But he’s been out of practice. He hasn’t had to do a lot of burying in the time he was approximately 3,000 miles hidden away from the center of all that pain and all that love that cuts through his heart so painfully he’s sure he’ll have lasting nerve damage. He almost forgot how fresh and sharp that familiar pain could be when it was right in front of his face. In California it wasn’t too bad, mostly just dull reminders that he could chase away with a shot or a one night stand. He got used to ignoring it. It was easy to swallow down when the only thing that would trigger it was a short guy at a bar with chocolate brown hair and an attitude or the flash of a clown on the boardwalk or elsewhere, reminding him that his world isn’t the same brick and dirt as it is for everyone else. But those things were never the real thing, and in a moment, Richie’s breath would come back to him, and he could go back to trying to forget the way he only felt like half a person.

In the end, though, Richie knows this is all for the better, facing this pain head-on. Because, if he’s going to be in love with his best friend, the one who never loved him back, then he might as well live in the same city as him, sleeping under the same sky. It’s at least less pathetic than hiding on the other coast, writing letters he never sent, wondering if he’d have to go back, after 27 years, to meet his maker in the form of the clown that never left his nightmares. If he’d have to watch it when It kills the center of Richie’s whole world, right in front of him, and he can’t do anything, because Richie wasn’t there to make sure he got out and learned to fight the demons that hid inside. That guilt hurt something else. That fear was worse. Way worse than the pain of being lonely and unloved. He’d dealt with that pain for long enough, and he knows it so well he can live in it. That, he could handle. He can handle this. 

He thinks he can handle this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thank you so much for reading! I hope you're enjoying this story. I plan to continue to update on Fridays. The next chapter is a doozy though, so we'll see how it goes. I uploaded twice this week, because I felt like this chapter just had to finally go out, and I hope to get the next one out next friday. I'd love to know what you think if you've made it this far, and I also want to thank you again for reading. I love these characters and I want to do them justice and give them the story I think they really deserved.
> 
> Check me out on tumblr if you're so inclined. I post pictures with the chapters there, usually pinned to the top of my blog. lastdeathdoor.tumblr.com
> 
> Thank you and I hope to see you soon!!! :) :) :)


End file.
